Food (or bumper sticker) for thought

I walk into school every day. (Yup, you can be jealous.) Twice a day I pass by the cars parked in front of my apartment building. For the past couple of months there has been a car with a bumper sticker that bothers me.

Bumper sticker on a car parked by my building.

It’s not that I don’t like bumper stickers. I have put stickers on all (two) of the cars that I've owned. Right now I have a silver palmetto and moon sticker (think South Carolina flag) on my car. I also had the one shown below (before it fell off somewhere :( ). 

Wag More Bark Less bumper sticker.

If you were driving behind me you would probably assume that I'm from South Carolina and that I'm an animal lover who likes it when people are nice. And you would be right. Bumper stickers tell the people driving behind you what you like, where you live, etc. They remind drivers that the big metal boxes on the roads contain people who have lives. Not to mention the chuckle they give you when you’re stuck at a stoplight. One sticker that you can see all over Golden is shown below. I like it because it's sort of nerdy like most of the people in Golden!

Au (Elemental symbol for gold) representing Golden, CO. 

And I’m not against this person sharing their opinion about drilling with the world. I work in a field that is supported by big oil companies that have drilling project all over the world. My research focuses improving surveys so that drilling can be more successful.

No, I think I’m bothered because this sticker takes a huge issue that is very complex and simplifies it to a black and white fact. I think we all know that the sticker doesn't mean that he or she likes to drilling with his/her power drill or the physical job of drilling out in the field (as we saw here it’s a messy, tough job). The creator of the sticker is from an oil town in Utah and meant it to be a way for people to connect the fuel they put in their car to where it comes from. Check out this article for more information. That's a great thing but I don't think that's the message communicated. I think it is really a sly way to comment on U.S. sources of energy and how they are retrieved like fracking. 

You can't take this sticker literally. For me at least, it brings to mind all the issues connected to drilling and the way the issues are poorly communicated. I mean things like fracking and the BP Macondo well disaster. As a geophysicist, this sticker urges me to say no! We (the oil industry) know drilling is dangerous and risky but we take precautions and try to be safe. We DON'T just blindly LOVE drilling! I wish there was a bumper sticker that could communicate all the risks and dangers of drilling while also stating the benefits in a way that the reader could take their own position. But as I mull over it more, I conclude that no bumper sticker could ever do that (or be small and readable enough to fit on any car) and that it is MY job as a scientist to put out information that assists decision makers. To communicate with the world and help find the best energy solution that fits the public not the industry. 

And so, in the end, I'm glad that bumper sticker is there every day. Even though most days I just want to replace it with some other "I heart" sticker like this.

Much better than "I heart drilling!" Don't you think?

Or a bumper sticker with this saying on it (Get it? Look at the title of the blog!)

Another good saying for a bumper sticker.

Amazing how a 5 minute walk and a bumper sticker bring can make for a long blog post! These are just my initial thoughts and I don't have it all figured out (obviously). So what do you think? What do your bumper stickers say about you? What does "I heart drilling!" mean to you?

Burning ice

Did you know there is a type of ice that can burn while someone holds it? Don't believe me? Well, look at the picture below. It's not a trick!

Methane hydrate burning in someone's hands.

Alright so it's not really ice. But it looks and feels like ice. It's really methane hydrate, a specific type of gas hydrate. The word hydrate is a term used in organic chemistry to indicate that a substance contains  water. So a gas hydrate is a gas trapped in a ice-like cage of water molecules. It's really the methane burning while the water melts - not exactly burning ice but that's what it looks like!

A diagram of how gas hydrates form.

In addition to looking super cool when it burns, methane hydrates have some important impacts on energy and climate change. Methane hydrate forms in sediments beneath the ocean floor requiring low temperatures and high pressures to form but its usually located shallower than oil reservoirs. The methane hydrates are a problem for the guys drilling wells because it could blow-up. But methane is also a source of energy (natural gas) and ideally the methane hydrate could increase the amount of domestic energy products but we would need to figure out how to extract it. Methane is very bad for our atmosphere (actually worse than CO2) and if the methane hydrates were to melt and release the methane it could be the tipping point to start an even faster global warming.

In a paper published in a 1996 issue of  Science, one of the most highly regarded scientific journals, Steve Holbrook, Hartley Hoskins, Warren Wood, Ralph Stevens, and Daniel Lizarrale report their findings of the amount of methane hydrates in three wells located in the Blake Ridge area, offshore South Carolina. (I lived in SC for 10 years without knowing we had gas hydrates or any energy near!) This paper came out during the early investigations into methane hydrates and everyone was still unsure how much of this stuff was out there. These guys concluded that the volume of hydrates located in the area offshore of South Carolina had been over estimated and that global estimates could be 3 times too high. 

The location of Blake Ridge offshore of SC.

Methane hydrates are found by acquiring seismic data over the location. A seismic survey is where a boat tows a source (air gun - makes vibrations) and receivers (hydrophones - they listen for the reflected vibrations) over the ocean floor. The methane hydrates are found by the presence of a bottom simulating reflector (BSR) in the data. Basically the difference from the presence of gas hydrates creates a reflection that shows up as a line in the seismic profile. The image below depicts the data from the 1996 paper.

Seismic data of the bottom simulating reflector (BSR) highlighted in blue. 

So in 1996 it looked like estimates for methane hydrates were not going to be as large as originally thought but because they could actually provide us with energy and could cause more climate change the research continued. It was actually written into the Energy Act of 2005 that the research would keep getting funded. And now after years of more research the estimate of  global methane hydrate volume is around 700,000 Tcf (trillion cubic feet) which is enormous when compared to the 200 Tcf of worldwide natural gas reserves! Since 1996 lots of methane hydrate was found in the Arctic permafrost and Gulf of Mexico. The estimates from the seismic data were too simplified and the complexity of gas hydrates is now better understood. The first methane was produced from a well going through the permafrost in northern Canada in 2008. Experiments continue but it looks promising that this form of energy can be produced safely. But the future is never certain and with the worry of releasing too much into the atmosphere it is worth taking the risks to get more energy? What do you guys think? Are you just fascinated with the burning ice?

Oil drilling: a dirty job

How does working two weeks each month sound? Well if you're working the 9 to 5 job or crazy graduate student hours it might sound like a deal. But the work this kind of  job requires might be a bit beyond what you're willing give. Just look at how tough of a time Mike from Dirty Jobs is having:



Now imagine doing that kind of job on an offshore drilling platform in the middle of the ocean! As we saw in the story of gasoline getting oil to the gas station is an involved process but getting the oil up from deep within the earth is quite the process too. The U.S. imports a large part of our oil from foreign sources (almost 50% in 2010) but we have a large amount of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. This is where offshore drilling platforms are found. In 2006, there were over 4,000 platforms in the gulf according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. An image helps that number hit home.

The 4,000 platforms in the Gulf of Mexico in 2006.

So how do these offshore oil rigs get to the oil? Well, the one video I found that describes the process very clearly is actually for a research vessel trying to drill through Earth's crust which is pretty cool! The process to drill for oil is the same but the drilling stops when the reservoir (big pocket of oil and gas) is reached.



Basically, a vessel or platform positions itself about the location by GPS and then lowers a drill head on a long cable down to the ocean floor. The hole is lined with casing (metal piping) to reinforce it. Once the reservoir is reached then the oil is pumped up and to a holding tank or through a pipeline to shore.

The guys who are out there on the rigs work 2 weeks straight often with 12 hour shifts (they are paid pretty well though). Fortunately the platforms aren't just for business. They usually have a movie theater and gym. This article describes the rig life in more detail. Sleeping in tiny bunks and braving windy weather are just some of the downsides of the job.

The process to reach oil thousands of feet below the ocean isn't easy. It's amazing to me the technology involved to get the precious resource out. As with my brief story of gasoline, there is a lot I'm leaving out so this will fit into a blog post. Read this longer story of the complete oil drilling process over at HowStuffWorks for more information. If you think you can brave the waves, tiny room, and 12 hour days then kudos to you because I definitely couldn't do it!

The story of gas(oline)

Have you ever been filling up your car at the gas station and wondered where that smelly liquid comes from? When it costs an arm and a leg to fill up the tank then it’s got to be a long, expensive process, right? Well, I admit that I generally am watching the numbers next to the $ increase rapidly instead of thinking about how gas traveled to get to my car’s tank.

But it is a very important story with impacts to our country’s economy, national security, and energy future. Not to mention the personal impacts when you thought you could make those last 30 miles with the empty light on because, hey, Jeremy did it in Top Gear (go to 8:00 in the video for the real drama).

Watch Part 1 and Part 2.

Alright, back to gasoline. Here is the whole story in picture flowchart form. The very, very beginning is not pictured because black goo turning blacker doesn’t lend to a good picture. (I'm referring to animal and plant material slowly being compressed to create oil.) I start with an image I created because I couldn't find any good ones on Google.

Geophysics combined with geology leads to a well being drilled and oil extracted.

The oil is then taken to a refinery and makes its way toyour local gas station.

OK, so now in more detail. The story of gasoline starts with crude oil (made out of hydrocarbons; crude because it is unrefined) deep in the earth. We extract oil on land and from under the ocean. Let’s focus on the oil taken from beneath the ocean, say in the Gulf of Mexico, a place full of oil. The first step is to find it! This type of treasure hunting involves large ships running different types of surveys. Most likely a seismic survey (sends out vibrations and listens for them to come back) and maybe electromagnetic survey (sends out electrical energy which goes down into the earth and is recorded at a receiver on the seafloor) are run over an area in the ocean.  The data is processed by geophysicists who create a model of the subsurface. Then geophysicists consult with geologists to make sure the model make sense. An oil company then spends millions or billions of dollars to drill down to wear the oil is located (more on that technology in a later post). The oil is extracted and sent to a refinery where it is filtered into gasoline as well as other products like diesel fuel and kerosene. The refining process basically separates the oil by different boiling points with gasoline having a lower boiling point than kerosene or diesel fuel. Finally the gasoline is put into a tanker and delivered to your local gas station. The End.

So what are you actually paying for at the pump? Well, I had the same question and luckily for us the U.S. Energy Information Administration broke it down.

The breakdown of where the money goes for a gallon of gas.

I know this was a long story but it is an important one. This general story of gasoline glossed over some of the important issues behind this controversial energy product but it is a starting place for more detailed posts about some of the processes involved to get oil from below the ocean turned into gasoline for our cars.

I'll still always watch the numbers next to the $ when I fill up my car with gas but now I'll also think about the journey the oil took to get to the gas station and where my money is going.